6.7: Cultural Ecology of Religion

Religion interacts with a great number of things within any culture. Economic activity, politics, ethnicity, language, and the environment all interact with religion in complex and compelling ways. The vast extent of the interactions can’t be fully explored here, but a few examples will suffice to introduce you some ways of thinking about how religion (or any other cultural practice) interacts with other elements of culture.

Figure 6-37: Reseda, CA - Payday Lender Storefront. Usury was once considered a very serious sin, undermining the banking and lending industry. In recent years, deregulation of usury laws have resulted in the proliferation of high interest rate loans, even in the most religious regions.

Religion and Politics

In the United States, as is the case elsewhere, religious affiliation is a good predictor of political behavior. In the US, Evangelical Christians and Mormons rank among the most politically conservative voters in the US year after year. For nearly 100 years after the Civil War, many Southern Baptists were fervent supporters of the Democratic Party (Abraham Lincoln was a Republican). The so-called “Reagan Revolution” of the 1980 created a much-energized alliance between Republicans and conservative Christians. Certainly, part of the switch was motivated by the Democrats’ support of Civil Rights for African-Americans, but hot-button religious issues, particularly abortion, drove many Evangelicals to the Right (Republican). Leading the charge were several high-profile television ministers, such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. The new alliances, particularly with the pro-business/anti-taxation element of the Republican Party forged during the Reagan era have caused some Evangelical Christians some discomfort however. The numerous Biblical restrictions on usury, for example, have made it difficult for some Evangelicals to fully support Republican policies calling for de-regulation caps on the interest rates charged to people taking out loans.

Religion and Economics

Religious beliefs affect numerous economic activities. For example, many religions condemn charging interest on loans. So, few people would loan money in many parts of the world for many centuries. Jewish people, who faced few religious restrictions on usury, faced little competition in the banking industry until Christian doctrine on usury began to change following the Reformation. This explains in part why Jewish people have a long-standing involvement with the banking and jewelry industries. In a very similar fashion, many Evangelical Christians and Mormons expressly forbid the consumption of alcohol. It is therefore not surprising that few wineries exist in Utah or Alabama. On the other hand, California’s long association with Catholicism has helped advance the very profitable viticulture industry in that state. Muslims and Jews (and some Christians) abstain from eating pork because of religious restrictions; therefore pig farming is an industry largely absent from Israel or the Muslim world. Many parts of India abstain from eating any meat, so animal husbandry would be an unlikely career path in many parts of the Hindu world.

Religion and the Environment

Religious beliefs also influence people’s interaction with the natural environment. Certainly, Christian attitudes about nature, especially in terms of exploiting natural resources has had fascinating consequences in American history. The Puritans of New England, having fled Europe during a period when many people continued to practice rituals tied to pre-Christian nature religions, held a pretty dim view of the great forests of New England. To them, the city was where Christians could find orderliness, a trait they considered evidence of God’s plan. Puritans considered Boston, a city upon a hill, a holy beacon for the rest of the world to watch for moral guidance. Farming landscapes were good too, because they were free from the chaos that characterized the wild places on earth where Satan was influential. Great examples of these views are found in the literary works of 18^th century authors, like Nathaniel Hawthorne (e.g., The Scarlett Letter), but the notion that the wilderness is a chaotic place for sinfulness can be found today in numerous slasher films, frequently set in a forest, at a summer camp, where teenagers abandon godly morals – and meet a brutal punishment. The NHL ice hockey team, the New Jersey Devils, derives its name ultimately from this same Christian fear of forests and untamed wilderness.

In the 19^th century, American attitudes began to change toward wilderness. Where once the wilderness was considered a place of chaos and moral confusion, a place where people become “bewildered”; people like John Muir began to argue that the wilderness was instead where people could commune with all that was spiritualty good. As the Industrial Revolution and modern capitalism wrought massive changes to society, religious folks began to rethink old Puritanical ideas. Today, many consider cities as locus of moral degradation and spiritual corruption, and instead think of wilderness areas as sites of largely free from the sinfulness of the city; or “God’s Country” in the words of many.

Figure 6-39: Yosemite National Park, CA - Yosemite Falls. The preservation of this landscape for recreation and conservation reflects a significant change in religious-spiritual attitudes toward nature in the mid-19^th century.

Those two philosophical positions still battle for supremacy and geographers have found that religious affiliation has a great deal of influence over what people think about things like climate change or deforestation. If your religion commands you to be a good steward of the natural environment, you are likely to have a positive view of environmentalism. If on the other hand, you think that the earth is provided by God for humankind to use as humans see fit, then perhaps coal mining or pipelines won’t bother you. The latter belief is more common among religious conservatives in the United States. Some Christian Fundamentalists take it even further, believing that ecological catastrophes, like global climate change, are a sign of the approaching Apocalypse, or “Rapture”, and therefore a welcome sign of the end-of-days.

ADDITIONAL LINKS

Dawn.
Ramazan in the Arctic – How do you break a fast at sundown if the sun doesn’t set?

https://www.dawn.com/news/1194079/ra...sun-doesnt-set